Windows Phone Marketplace has now exceeded the 45,000 applications mark. According to a All About Windows Phone report at the time posting, "45,610 apps have been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Of that number, 14,261 apps were added in the last 90 days and 5,837 app were added in the last 30 days."The Windows […]

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Windows Phone Marketplace has now exceeded the 45,000 applications mark. According to a All About Windows Phone report at the time posting, "45,610 apps have been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Of that number, 14,261 apps were added in the last 90 days and 5,837 app were added in the last 30 days."

The Windows Phone Marketplace passed the 40,000 mark in the middle of November, it has taken around 26 days to add the next 5,000 apps.

The Marketplace will reach the 50,000 app mark in the first week of January 2012. However, it is possible that this mark may be reached before the end of the year if submission rates accelerate.

In other Windows Phone news, a critical bug in Windows Phone 7.5 is discovere that allows attackers to disable a device by carrying out a denial-of-service (DoS) attack via SMS.

The bug was discovered by WinRumors's Khaled Salameh, "the attack, which isn't device / carrier specific, works by simply sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user. The device will reboot and the messaging hub will not work, and it can also be triggered if a user sends a message through Facebook chat or Windows Live Messenger."

The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user. If the SMS contains a particular string of text then Windows Phone 7.5 devices will reboot and the messaging hub will not open despite repeat attempts. We have tested the attack on a range of Windows Phone devices, including HTC's TITAN and Samsung's Focus Flash. The attack is not device specific and appears to be an issue with the way the Windows Phone messaging hub handles particular characters. The bug is also triggered if a user sends a Facebook chat message or Windows Live Messenger message to a recipient.

The bug also affects other parts of the operating system as well. "If you have a friend pinned as a live tile on your device, and that friend posts a particular message on Facebook, then the live tile will update and cause the device to lock up."

To remediy this, "since you have a small amount of time when you first cut the device on to get past the lock screen and get rid of the live tile before it can flip over and start causing problems."

Also, Ben the PC Guy on Twitter said that the company is giving out Windows Phone devices to anyone with "Droid rage" from Android malware. His tweet reads:

"@Microsoft If I sure am! 🙂 If you have #droidrage from Android malware, share your story w/me and you could win a #windowsphone !"

To enter the competition, just tweet @benthepcguy with your story and the hashtag #droidrage to be in to win.

About The Author

Deepak Gupta is a IT & Web Consultant. He is the founder and CEO of diTii.com & DIT Technologies, where he’s engaged in providing Technology Consultancy, Design and Development of Desktop, Web and Mobile applications using various tools and softwares. Sign-up for the Email for daily updates. Google+ Profile.